But no, it turned out to be Grace Vanderbilt, although the manoeuvre that brought this about remained unknown for years. She had quietly put herself forward in the most discreet and intelligent of ways, so that if she succeeded her success would appear to have come out of the blue and if she had failed there would been no trace of her gambit.
She had written a charming letter to the German Ambassador in Washington asking him for his advice. She had, she told him, been very kindly treated by the imperial family in Potsdam some years earlier when she had been the guest of her sister, and she would like to show her appreciation. What did the Ambassador think was the best way of doing this? When the Ambassador cabled the Emperor with the contents of the letter, Kaiser Wilhelm was delighted – he remembered Grace, and the name Vanderbilt was an impressive one – and sent her a cablegram requesting her to ask his brother Prince Henry to dinner.
The shock wave travelled round New York: the snub to Mrs Astor was unprecedented, signalling the end of a reign of more than thirty years. This seismic event was summed up by Town Topics with its usual gleeful malice: ‘Young Mrs Cornelius … has succeeded beyond cavil in establishing herself as the representative of the most powerful family in America. Mrs Astor will sail before the dinner takes place.’
* * *
Finally came the event that brought the whole era to a close: the Bradley-Martin ball. With this, the river of gold burst its banks and flooded the plain – and after it had receded, life was never the same again. Conspicuous consumption, although not dead, became more discreet; instead of awestruck reportage of the breaking of each successive record of high spending, there was a new note of condemnation of excess, instead of admiration, obloquy.
At the time this huge expenditure on a night’s frivolity was contemplated, life had seldom been worse for the city’s poor. The Panic of 1893 still held its grip, unemployment was high and the economy low and stagnant. During these years banks closed, railroads failed, unemployment rose sharply (to 25 per cent in New York) and pitiful tales of poverty abounded. Soup kitchens opened, people chopped wood, broke rocks and sewed in exchange for food and sometimes women resorted to prostitution in order to feed their families. As miners were laid off, there were strikes: they would ‘submit no longer to the cruel, heartless and inhuman conditions laid on them by unscrupulous employers,’ said the president of the United Mine Workers of Illinois. The contrast with the life of the gilded few could not have been greater.
Although most people believed that the proposed ball was a further effort to outdo Alva Belmont, whose position since her remarriage had become unassailable, Cornelia Bradley-Martin always declared that her decision to give it was because she was so appalled by the sufferings of the poor that she had decided to do something about it (the Bradley-Martins were known for their generosity as landlords at Bal Macaan). The original idea, put forward by Bradley, was a concert. As his brother Frederick recorded, Cornelia Bradley-Martin disagreed. ‘Pray, what good will that do?’ she asked. ‘No, I’ve a far better idea.’
Her inspiration was not a huge donation to some relief fund but a plan to give a costume ball; this would, she said, raise everyone’s spirits as well as giving work to the florists, cooks, dressmakers, extra staff and food suppliers who would be involved. To keep this money within the US, the 1,200 invitations were despatched later than normal, so that no one had time to send to Europe – in particular, the House of Worth – for some spectacular creation.
From the moment the ball was rumoured, little else was spoken of. The Church weighed in heavily, some vicars – notably of the richer New York churches – supporting the Bradley-Martins (‘Shots from the Pulpit’ was how the press described this public argument), by saying that the ball and other social functions were a good thing in general because of the money distributed among poor people in consequence; others argued fiercely against it. ‘With all the people who have to lie awake nights contriving to spend their time and money, and all the others who lie awake wondering how they may get food, there is danger in the air,’ said the Rev. Dr Madison Peters bluntly. ‘All history teaches us that the concentration of wealth is the forerunner of social upheaval … the situation is more serious than many suppose.’
The New York Times speculated on the costumes to be worn. ‘Among the ladies, the preference will, no doubt, be given to those parts that can be dressed with diamonds. What is the use of owning, as New York is said to do, a thousand millions of dollars in precious stones if such an opportunity of showing them is not to be turned to the best account.’ They were right.
The Bradley-Martins’ legendary ‘monument to vanity’, as the New York World put it, took place on 10 February 1897, at the Waldorf Hotel on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street. Fifth Avenue and both sides of 33rd Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway were cordoned off by the police before the arrival time of 10.00 p.m. and after. This did not prevent a massive traffic jam of horses and carriages in nearby blocks, complicated by the decision of many of the Bradley-Martins’ guests to stop en route in order to have their photographs in costume taken at Gilbert’s Studio at Fifth Avenue and 35th Street (Gilbert’s wisely remained open all night to encourage business). Snow and ice added to the difficulties.
When the guests finally arrived at the Waldorf – the ball was held on its first floor – they found a scene reminiscent of Versailles. As they entered, a huge mirror directly ahead, framed with roses, reflected in an endless perspective the exquisite silks, satins and velvets of the sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century costumes and the profusion of jewels that were the order of the night. Even the waiters wore tights and powdered wigs.
Although some of the guests came as Egyptian princesses and Japanese noblemen, Pocahontas and George Washington, most paid tribute to the French court, from Madame de Pompadour to the Sun King. Far and away the most popular costume for women, though, was Marie Antoinette: fifty replicas of the doomed queen attended that night. J. P. Morgan was dressed as Molière; his niece, Miss Pierpont Morgan, came as Queen Louise of Prussia, John Jacob Astor was Henry of Navarre – his mother, Caroline, one of the Marie Antoinettes, wore a gown adorned with $250,000 worth of jewels. Dealers in antiques and fine jewellery had been cleaned out of old buckles, snuff boxes, lorgnettes, diamond- or pearl-studded girdles and rings.
There were eighty-six people, said the New York World, whose total wealth was ‘more than men could grasp’, with a dozen worth more than $10 million. Oliver Belmont wore a suit of inlaid gold armour valued at $10,000; Mrs Astor wore her famous diamond tiara worth $200,000, while the jewels of Cornelia Bradley-Martin herself, worth an estimated $50,000, were probably the most noticeable of all.
Cornelia, now a plump matron with a bow mouth, a generous bosom and incipient jowls, was an unlikely Mary Queen of Scots in a black velvet dress with white collar and a twenty-foot train of black velvet over a white satin underskirt. Against this chaste background she looked like a walking display cabinet. Her dress, embroidered with gold thread and hung with pearls, was adorned with clusters of diamond grapes ordered for Louis XIV; on her right shoulder was a quatrefoil pendant of rubies and diamonds in addition to a giant diamond brooch and the staggering ruby necklace that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.1 Her toilette did not escape the eye of The Saunterer: ‘Mrs Bradley-Martin was so ablaze with diamonds from head to foot that she looked like a dumpy lighthouse.’
The ball received immense press coverage, thanks to the expansion of society pages during the 1890s: as the rich grew ever richer and more ostentatious, so their doings were covered more fully by a growing breed of society columnists who became names in their own right, like the renowned Ivy Ross, who wrote the New York Journal’s famous Cholly Knickerbocker column.
Most of what was said was scathingly critical. Even for a country that had grown as used to, and admiring of, the making of money as America, this outpouring of almost $400,000 on a single night’s entertainment for 800-odd people was too much. The country
was still in a depression, with all its social consequences, and the Bradley-Martin ball, with its final total cost of $369,000 (over £7 million today), seemed to have taken the cult of limitless wealth to a new height – or rather, low.
Thus the remonstrances before the ball were as nothing to the flood of reproaches afterwards. One popular commentator, William Cowper Brann, described it as ‘one more festering sore on the syphilitic body social’. All over the country newspapers wrote of it in blistering terms, ministers preached sermons on its scandalous extravagance – and the New York City authorities decided that if the Bradley-Martins could afford such luxurious entertainment they could and should pay increased property taxes. Promptly, they set about the necessary first step of proving that the Bradley-Martins were residents of New York rather than Bal Macaan.
In vain did Bradley Martin testify that the lease of the 46,000-acre Bal Macaan estate, on which the castle was situated, still had three years to run. In vain did he swear that he always went to Scotland about the first week in August and stayed there until December, then he generally travelled on the Continent until the following June, or until it was time to go back to Bal Macaan. In vain did he swear that he was a subject of Great Britain, that his visits to the US never lasted more than three months and that he came to New York only about once in two years. None of this weighed a jot with the Supreme Court.
When asked if he was a member of many New York clubs and he replied that he was a member of the Metropolitan, Union, Downtown and Tuxedo Clubs and was a life member of the Knickerbocker (‘I appear as a resident of several clubs because they have no non-resident list’) and he still kept a pew in Grace Church, this must have appeared to the judiciary as a handsome piece of evidence. And when he replied: ‘New York, of course, New York,’ when asked where was the centre of his transactions, it was the clincher.
‘It appears,’ concluded the Supreme Court happily, ‘that he still retains his citizenship and that there has been no change in his habits of life since 1882.’ They doubled the assessed value of the Bradley-Martin mansion on West 20th Street, meaning that extra taxes2 of $200,000 on each of the Martins’ personal properties had to be paid.
On the Martins, the effect of the obloquy the ball had drawn on them and, no doubt, the determination of the Supreme Court to penalise their extravagance was such that they decided to sell their house in New York and settle in London for good.
In May 1899, the Martins said farewell to New York with a feast of huge splendour that was, crucially, not large enough to attract the same degree of disapproving attention. In any case, they had taken care to arrange their passage to England for the following day. The New York World estimated that 90 per cent of the men present possessed personal fortunes of $5 million or more. The food was exquisite and, in a nice touch, the most popular piece in the accompanying music was ‘If You Haint Got No Money You Needn’t Come ‘Round’. The price per person of this simple farewell was roughly $116,000.
* * *
It was time for the merry-go-round to stop.
CHAPTER 18
It Was All Too Much
Soon the procession of heiresses trooping across the Atlantic would also cease. So many of these marriages turned out unhappily – for the girls – that those at home began to think twice about the benefits offered by strawberry leaves. ‘She never dreams that the coronet usually turns into brass and signifies nothing but a decadent race, profligate, immoral, poverty-stricken, and that instead of a crown of glory it will only be a weight of shame on her head to crush her to the earth in humiliation and despair,’ wrote one New York vicar, summing up the American view of the tide of cash-for-coronet marriages, as they were popularly known. Although the majority of the marriages he cited involved European nobility, there were enough in Britain to serve as a warning.
After the first glamour had worn off, life in England, with its wretched climate, its lack of home comforts, the isolation of country life and a husband who spent the new wife’s money while going his own way resulted in disillusionment, misery and – among the more spirited – a determination somehow to escape. Lady William Bagot, who had left her husband several times, finally separated; Sarah Stokes (of New York), who had married Baron Halkett, bringing $5 million, was divorced; as were Lord and Lady Rosslyn (Anna Robinson), while the divorced Lady Francis Hope (the actress May Yohé) ‘ex-musical-comedy star and ex-duchess-presumptive, is, to earn her daily bread, reduced almost to the lowest depths. She is now giving nightly a song and dance turn in a cheap music hall in Sacramento,’ reported the Chicago Sunday Sun with relish.
Better known still were three maritally unhappy American duchesses: Consuelo Marlborough, Consuelo Yznaga and her daughter-in-law Helena Zimmerman.
* * *
The archetype of these unions so fulminated against by the American press – indigent European nobleman cynically weds innocent American heiress to acquire her huge dowry – was probably that of the marriage of Alice Thaw and the Earl of Yarmouth, heir to the Marquess of Hertford. So innocent was Alice that she did not realise her future husband was homosexual; so determined was he to get hold of her money that the actual marriage ceremony was delayed by forty-five minutes as he negotiated for this while fielding a summons for debt.
Alice was one of the ten children of a Pittsburgh iron millionaire who had left each of them $1 million, with more to come from her even richer mother. She had met Lord Yarmouth through her half-brother, Harry Thaw. Yarmouth was known as ‘one of the poorest peers in England’,1 but Alice was clearly determined to become a countess although many of her family disapproved of her marriage. They married in Pittsburgh and her mother, equally keen on the wedding, helped to organise a settlement of $1 million on the couple, plus an annual income that also amounted to $100,000.
The couple went to London, where Alice was presented, but her new life lasted a mere three years, when, unsurprisingly, the marriage was annulled on grounds of non-consummation. Fortunately for Alice, most of her money was securely in trust, although even when she was safely back in America she continued to pay Lord Yarmouth an annual income of $30,000 – it is thought as a quid pro quo for not contesting the divorce.
The story of Frances (‘Fanny’) Ellen Work, who would become the great-grandmother of Diana Princess of Wales, and the Hon. James Boothby Burke Roche is even more poignant, especially as her father had made his views clear.
‘I am an American to my backbone,’ he had declared. ‘Therefore I have only contempt for these helpless, hopeless, lifeless men that cross the ocean to carry off the very flower of our womanhood. When they win our girls they use them, humble them and dishonour them, and then cast them aside for actresses or adventuresses of their own real class. If I had anything to say about the matter I’d make an international marriage a hanging offence.’
Franklin Work had built up his fortune in traditionally American fashion, starting from very little and working his way up, as he did so becoming an expert carriage-driver and owner of some of the finest trotting horses in the US. Through this sport, he met the legendary Commodore Vanderbilt, whose protégé he became – and increased his fortune even more. Fanny, his favourite daughter and set to inherit much of his money, was equally fond of horses. During her debutante seasons in New York she was much admired for her beauty, style and intelligence. She spent lavishly, enjoying parties and the excitement of being admired in beautiful clothes. At the same time, she was very well read, could speak French fluently and took a great interest in paintings and furniture.
She met James (‘Jim’) Roche for the first time when he spent a few days in New York. Jim was tall, good-looking, with good skin, dark eyes, a dark moustache, a sizeable dollop of Irish charm and, as his older brother then had no sons, heir presumptive to the barony of Fermoy.
Though Fanny could not know it, Jim was broke. His family’s Irish estates had been gambled away, he was a younger son and he led a life far beyond what he could actually afford, scattering debts everywhe
re. He had gone to America with his great friend Moreton Frewen, already known as ‘Mortal Ruin’ for his ability to encourage his friends to invest in reckless financial schemes that failed, thus losing their money. Jim and Frewen, who was married to Clara, the eldest Jerome sister, had been friends since their days at Cambridge, where they had spent most of their time in hard riding to hounds and enjoying themselves.
When Moreton asked Jim to stay at his cattle ranch in Wyoming, Jim accepted with alacrity, partly to try and make a fortune, partly for the opportunities of shooting, riding and general adventure in tough, open-air conditions. They took with them letters of introduction to many of the smartest families in New York, where they spent a few weeks after arrival. It was here that Jim first met the beautiful Fanny, but the friendship did not ripen until his second visit to the US.
In Fanny he saw a way out of his financial problems and she, for her part, was determined to marry the glamorous Jim although under no illusions as to her father’s reactions. Their wedding took place in Christ Church, New York City, in September 1880, and although he disapproved, and indeed disinherited her, her father did, however, make her an allowance of $7,000 a year. The couple set sail for England almost at once, leaving Franklin – who had restrained himself after his daughter’s wedding – to thunder after another similar one:
‘It’s time this international marrying came to a stop for our American girls are ruining our country by it. As fast as honourable hardworking men can earn their money their daughters take it and take it across the ocean. And for what? For the purpose of a title and the privilege of paying the debts of so-called noblemen.’
The Husband Hunters Page 29